Not enough, too much

Nothing new written. Body count still at 144. Currently, I'm absorbed in the epic quest of "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker." Lousy virtual world, all addictive yet fruitless in the end. It's a distraction on top of a bunch of others, pulling me away from the fragile strains that tie me down to my chair in front of my computer to write. I'm amazing at coming to find a distraction to keep me from writing. Currently, it's the video game, but I've taken to convincing myself that I love to wash dishes. Our dishwasher has gone south, and my wife and I have no choice (until we break down and buy a new dishwasher) to revert back to the 1960s when the whirring squat beasts weren't as popular in homes. And, along the way, I've found some kind of Zen calm in the humbling process of washing and drying dishes by hand...the meticulous care with the brush, the sponge and the dishtowel, the balance of water and soap, the sense of accomplishment to shoving your hands in hot, soapy water and rubbing stains off plates and cups At the end, all the clean dishes stacked in the cupboard. A clean sink. Hands pruning and slightly stinging from the hot, sudsing lagoon you drowned your cutlery and dishes in. A more holy man would call it a baptism. Born-again china. Knifes and forks saved from the damnation of eternal peanut butter and pasta sauce stains.

Back up a second. I do write, but it's at work when I'm indirectly warmed up during my data-entry job and it's in fragments...small, inspired pieces of orphan fiction that make some sort of sense, or will one day when I find it a good home. To me, writing these small islands of fiction is the opposite of what the French call "l'esprit d'escalier," where you think of the witty comeback when it's far too late to use them. In my case, I'm going to have this descriptions, these bits of dialogue, or whole plots just sitting around at the Big Dance, waiting for a proper suitor to ask them for this waltz.

The thing is, I have bits and pieces for the novel, but I'm only adjusting the body count when I make forward motion on the novel, starting from the beginning, or when I get the point where I can take on of those pieces and find it a good home. Tomorrow, I'm writing. I need to go through one of my scraps of paper I bring home from work, tattooed with ink stains in the form of ideas. I need to get Rayelle running for her life again.

Speaking of Rayelle (or main characters, in general), I'm planning on writing the novel based on the first-half format of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath": However, instead of switching back and forth every chapter between the Joads' travels and the third-person narratives, I'm going to have Rayelle take the first chapter, Patrick (the other main character) the second, then back to Rayelle for chapter three...and so on. The whole idea is going to have their exploits playing as a mirror to each other: One who is one her way "up" (socially and economically speaking) and the other on his way down. There's a temptation to place them in the same sort of situation, only to have them view it through their own attitude-prism, but I can't see it happening through the whole novel. Too tedious of a trick, I figure. Could turn into a gimmick if done wrong. It's on my mind, though...how to make their viewpoints compare and contrast...one belonging to a piece of gutter trash, the other to one of the most prized corporate possessions in future Seattle.

Again, so many ideas, so many distractions.

Vow

Seeing my collection of CDs, DVDs and books stacked in ordered rows about my house, I'm starting to feel a bit...I dunno...unseemly. I used to be a lot more active in Amnesty International when I was in college...back when, you know, I didn't have the money to buy music or video games, lusting after pre-release dates on gaming Web sites, groaning audibly when "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" would be pushed back again.

Yesterday, I picked up a copy of "Dark City" on DVD, an unbelievably gorgeous and enthralling piece of sci-fi, if you haven't seen it yet. To me, it's the thinking person's "Matrix," and yet it came out a year before the Keanu Reeves too-stylin'-to-make-sense actionner. Watch "Dark City" and check out all the themes that in the film that everyone only picked up on when Carrie-Anne Moss showed up a year later in a skin-tight PVC catsuit. From the lead character emerging wet and naked in a strange world to a frantic phone call by a mysterious guide/father figure to the final reality-bending fight between the psychically charged hero and the lead overseer, it's all there. And yet. "Dark City" went unnoticed while "The Matrix" inspires college courses. It's a crime.

Well, okay...right there. I'm going on about a movie. About $16 invested in a DVD. I've been hunting for this film for a while now, even since I got some extra money in my pocket, space on my shelf and a DVD player looking for fresh bits to scan and play at my whim. And I think to myself, "Well, this is all good...but."

But. But I should do something else. I'm becoming surrounded by distractions…toys and games that go blip and bloop and will be obsolete by 2005 when the next-next generation game systems come out. I'll watch "Dark City" maybe once a year. I have it as a trophy for friends to notice.

"Oh man, I forgot about that movie. That film rocked...like when that creepy kid bit into the guy's hand as he was hanging a million feet off the ground."

It's time to give this all up. Granted, I'm not going to the WWJD thing and toss out all my stuff. No, like all Americans, I'm trying to have my gear and be karmically balanced. Or something. Reverberations of Catholic guilt in my soul saying to do something more useful. Stop pining for a Playstation 2. Do something better with your life.

And as an American, that means: Give money to someone you don't know. Give it to some organization to do something you want to do, but don't have the courage or skills to make it happen. You think it's enough to send a check. Let them figure it out. After all, you grew up in the proxy wars played out by two superpowers with conflicting ideologues, but big checkbooks. They gave cash to smaller, hungrier countries that would carry a flag for their benefactors. It's a war that's not a war. The superpowers play real-time Risk in Latin America or Central Asia, but don't get their own hands bloody. No sirree.

And you think the same thing. You write a check. You put said check in a postage-paid envelope, and you send your cash feed into some little morality army trying to free political prisoners, save some endangered species or stop some godawful disease that your tax dollars going to your government could stop except the walking dead in the country the disease is in are unlucky enough to not have any oil under their feet.

But you feel good. Somehow. For this moment, you chipped an Unselfish stone off your soul statue. You feel more pure, dosed on a Jesus-bliss for saving a little, tiny bit of the world (although you turn your head to the obnoxious fact your donation can't begin to pay for the carnage done with your tax dollars by your oil-hungry, power-mad government). You feel.... like you can see beyond the whole consumerism meme. You've beaten the system this once, and you are just one step closer understanding this whole "global village" idea that seems to have been crushed and thrown aside in the lockstep to a cable-news war. You did this because it felt right, not because you were told to. Feeling compassion for people in other parts of the world is a revolutionary act these days. We're supposed to be scared, supposed to be locked in our shells because of people across the sea who are trying to kill us. Sending a check and a note of support on behalf of a democracy activist in Beijing is the closest you'll get to affect foreign policy. You marched in peace protests and called your senators about Iraq, and whiz-boom look at the rockets fly over Basra. So, here you go. Make your plan to save the world one check, one letter at a time. Maybe you alone won't save a village, but Oxfam could use your help. So can the folks that work to ban landmines.

From here on in, whatever I spent on music, DVDs or games, I'm giving the equal amount to charity. Whatever games or CDs I sell back, the money goes to charity. I can't go through life buying something and not giving something back somehow. It's probably going about it all going, but my energy is in the right place. The money has to do some good. After all, I feel better when I finally do something charitable compared to when I buy something. That positive energy has to go somewhere.

Maybe Lennon was right. All we really need is love.

And "Dark City." It is a superb flick.

Today's Word: Basket

From One Word

Cradle the world in your hands. Take the belongings of a million years with you, past the ghosts that haunt you, past the expectations of generations, and deep into a secret place where the wind is quiet. No words come to you, but your own. You aren't commanded; you aren't forced. World in a box.